help me build a lightweight sub-.275 cal groundhog detonator.

manbearpig

manbearpig

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looking for something with a standard contour (not bull) barrel that is accurate enough for varminting, sub .275 cal and in a factory chambering available in Canada (no wildcats or WSSMs plz). short or long action i dont care.
my current varmint gun is a very heavy .223 700P that weighs in at over 14lbs. its a joy to shoot but a nightmare to carry for miles across farmland.

looking for something both lighter to carry and in a chambering that gives the most dramatic groundhog detonations. id like to keep it under .275 because of caliber restrictions in some of the areas i hunt.

any suggestions? was thinking of picking up a Stevens in .243 or .22-250 and dropping in a Sharp Shooter Supply trigger and aftermarket stock, but im very open to suggestions.

has anyone ever varminted with a .270?
 
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The 270 works great on groundhogs. I was out hunting coyotes in the summer and they became targets of oppertunity. Nice thing is you can shoot the groundhog and backfill the hole at the same time. Why not get one of the new marlins XL-7 in 25-06 with a good scope and then you can tell me how it works.
 
This is a suggestion that may be a bit out in left field, but I really enjoy hunting groundhogs with a 25-20. Mine has iron sights. It turns Groundhog 'sniping' into Groundhog 'hunting', mainly because one has to do some stalking and hunting to get close enough for an iron-sight shot. There are no Groundhog detonations with this little cartridge, but I sure do enjoy it, and it is a bit more discreet than a 270-size cartridge as far as its report.
 
installing a quality set of aftermarket aperture sights on a varmint rifle sounds like a great idea - id ideally like a more modern chambering, but whatever rifle i choose ill definitely try to find some good sights for it as well.
sights and a scope dont have to be mutually exclusive either: with a QR-style scope setup you could remove the scope and challenge yourself to more difficult, rewarding shots with the iron sights any time you feel like it. if anything goes wrong with your scope youd also have a fall-back. the more i think about it the more i like this idea.
 
+1 on the 257 wby. If you're looking to *detonate* groundhogs, this is probably your best bet. It's the largest caliber for which there are readily available varmint bullets, and it can chuck them out at 3500+ fps.
The 7mag would also get the job done, though it's much harder to find proper varmint bullets for it. Still, a 120 VMAX at 3500+ fps would certainly meet your requirements.

Both of the above would double as big game guns in the fall too - and your springtime groundhog practice with it will prove most valuable

223's, 22-250's and 243's work very well indeed but certainly aren't 'spectacular.'
 
If you want, I could lend you a copy of a varmint hunting DVD I happen to have. It graphically shows the results of dozens of different cartridges on groundhogs
 
Nothing smacks a dirt pig into next week better than a hyper .25 cal. The best air show yet came from a medium heavy barrel Ruger MkI 25-06 tossing 85g v-max pills. 6 feet into the air in a spinning helicopter with a nice ass-over-apple cart at the top of the rise. I gave it a 9 1/2 out of 10 because of the lack of guts being thrown. Standard cal would have to be the 25-06 but a 25-06 AI really gets the thumbs up! You see I just had to have the hyper quarter bore so I ordered the LSS in 257 Weatherby. The .25 is a nice coyote cal too! Get a VX II 6-18 A/O LRV on top and your good to go.
 
I have a 257AI project rifle in the works. Having a slower 13" twist should improve MV a bit; though I don't have any groundhogs around here to do any 'field testing' on.
 
it should ideally be a caliber that i can buy off-the-shelf bullets for, and is commonly chambered in factory guns. ideally id like to avoid buying a gun and having to go through a costly barrel change right away.

SIR has the 7mm Mag in stock in both the Stevens and the Hawkeye (which, incidentally, i notice has gone up in price again - $599 > $645 > $678).

im assuming 7mm Mag recoil is comparable to the .300 Win Mag.... how would the common 150 grain Winchester Power Points perform on a 20lb groundhog at ~100 yards? :)

i like the idea of a multi-purpose caliber, unlike something like the .204 Ruger which is a dedicated varmint caliber.

thanks for the loan offer prosper, i might take you up on it :)
let me dig around and see if i can find some hunting or outdoors related DVDs i can lend you in return.
 
#%@$, 7mm Rem Mag is out.
the limit is actually .275, not .30. i know i should have checked the specific restriction. most people just say 'under .30 cal', and since ive always used a .223 or smaller i never really bothered to look into it further.
7mm is .284

has anyone else tried a .270 for varminting?

the .270 seems to give similar performance to the .25-06:
.270 90 grain @ 3600fps, 2595 ft/lbs
.25-06 85 grain @ 3475, 2275 ft/lbs
theres also a $10 difference in ammo cost between the two.
 
270 weatherby, then, or WSM?

They'll work, though proper Varmint bullets for them aren't common (but they are available if you look around. Speer TNT and Hornady VMAX come to mind.). I REALLY doubt you'll find any factory varmint loads for this cal.

I've splattered gophers with a 7mm08 in the past, and that's quite similar to the 270. At point-blank range, that's a recipe for getting covered with bits of gopher
 
You must be new at this manbearpig! You have to concern yourself with passthrough when varmint hunting in S.Ontario and your back stops. The .277 90 grain HP makes a mess of dirt pigs but is not a factory offering. You want varmint factory ammo you need to go .264 or less really. Its very hard to beat the 25-06 or for that matter the 243 Win with 55g Ballistic Tips. These are available factory loaded ammo. Dirt pigs are not hard to kill...can be tricky to get to die right now, before making it to the hole...but bullet placement takes care of that. 243 (6mm), .257, .264 (6.5) are all multi use in the right hands with the right bullets. Can't go wrong with any of them.

Oh...I still wouldn't buy a single square of butt wipe from SIR ....I'd use their cataloge first....thats what their service is like!
 
neck a 300 win mag down to a 204 caliber bullet and fire from a 4 foot long barrel should be really fast might wann shoot the longest pills you can find 3 inchs or more or it might not be stable at those speeds should have good range to

savage also makes these in 25-06

http://www.savagearms.com/110fp.htm swap it out in a reay for a B&C medalist stock and you'll have your self asniper riflle of doom
 
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Chilly Willy said:
You must be new at this manbearpig! You have to concern yourself with passthrough when varmint hunting in S.Ontario and your back stops. The .277 90 grain HP makes a mess of dirt pigs but is not a factory offering. You want varmint factory ammo you need to go .264 or less really. Its very hard to beat the 25-06 or for that matter the 243 Win with 55g Ballistic Tips. These are available factory loaded ammo. Dirt pigs are not hard to kill...can be tricky to get to die right now, before making it to the hole...but bullet placement takes care of that. 243 (6mm), .257, .264 (6.5) are all multi use in the right hands with the right bullets. Can't go wrong with any of them.
Click to expand...

i would not shoot at an animal where passthrough could be a problem, seeing as a miss would generate the same problem.
groundhogs are sitting on their own mini-backstops and we generally shoot them from slightly above anyway. ive yet to find a flat enough piece of groundhogging land in Ontario where backstop is a problem - either WE are up on the higher ground shooting down at them, or they are up against a hillside and the backstop is the hillside.

i just realized even the .270 would not work since its actually .277 and the limit is .275 (im not a reloader yet so i assumed .270 was .270).

damn, it looks like im not going to be able to get any <.275 'fun' chamberings in a factory rifle.

im not going to be getting my reloading equipment until at least late summer this year (its sitting down at a friends in the states since it would be $150 to ship) so it at least has to be a rifle i can buy AMMO for until then.
 
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